Computing devices have become ubiquitous in society. With the increased exposure to computing devices, users have greater access to information. However, depending upon how the information is presented, such computing devices can distract users when focused on other tasks or users may ignore the information presented via such computing devices due their attention being focused on the other tasks.
Users oftentimes receive notifications about information of interest. Receipt of notifications about the information of interest can be more convenient for users as compared to manually visiting sources of such information. For example, suppose a user is waiting for a shipment to be delivered at a company warehouse, while the user is away at a corporate office. Instead of the user periodically checking the website of the shipping company for a delivery status, it can be more convenient if the user receives a notification pertaining to the delivery status on a mobile device or another user device. The notification, for instance, can be a Short Message Service (SMS) message, a phone call, a page, a mobile push notification, or the like.
However, notifications can be disruptive to users depending upon attention states of the users. As an illustration, a notification can disrupt a user if the notification arrives while the user is busy in a meeting, driving, focused on an intellectual task, or otherwise unavailable to accept the notification. When notifications from multiple notification senders that are relevant to the user are considered as a whole, the total disruption from the notifications can be significantly detrimental to productivity of the user.
From the perspective of a notification sender, some notifications such as product promotions can provide benefits to the notification senders so long as receivers accept such notifications. For instance, a notification can be accepted by a user clicking on a mobile alert, answering a phone call, or the like. Accordingly, if the user is unavailable to accept the notification, the notification sender may not obtain the benefit associated with the notification.